IM NEVER DOING THAT AGAIN!!

In the effort to save money, l have foolishly taken as many over-night transports as possible. I justify it by saying that it saves me a night's accomodation & saves day time hours for sight-seeing.  But some trips are just not worth the discomfort. The bus trip from Siem Reap in Northern Cambodia, to the capital Phnom Penh, is one of those trips. I have travelled it several times at night & each time l have promised myself that 'lm not doing that again.' But time erases away the pain and l again think that a little discomfort will be worth the saving. 

The road is in a terrible condition, correlgated & pot-holed by heavy traffic & monsoon rains. That combined with extremely crammed conditions on a bus that possesses absolutely no suspension, is a nightmare of a night. Even after taking 'over the counter' Valium, l was kept awake all night but the bone rattling bangs and the constant honking by the driver to let all traffic know that he was ploughing through. It's a 6 or 7 hr trip, leaving about 11pm & arriving anywhere from 5-7am. Maybe l should have taken more Valium but you never know. Maybe l should have travelled during the day.

I arrived in Phnom Penh feeling tired, aching, dirty, and cranky as!!  I was not in the mood for negotiating with tuk tuk drivers at the bus station. My thumping headache morphed me into one of those demanding Westerners that l often see & want to smack. 

And even after a shower and l have scraped off the filth from the road & the bus, my mood cannot be lifted without a 10hr nap. And the day is wasted. The saving of a few dollars is lost. And again l state, 'I'm not doing that again.'

I have travelled in other third world countries, in fact, the over-night buses in neighbouring Laos, can be extremely comfortable. Apparently Giant Ibis bus company offer luxury buses in Cambodia but are not as well promoted at backpacker hostels because of the price. But now through blurred vision hindsight, it would have been worth it.

Train travel is my preference but there are none in this country.

I kick myself in the arse sometimes & also laugh at my effort to stretch my travel dollar as far & wide as l can strain it. And then when lm departing a country, l unload my left-over currency to  someone who looks like they need it. Sometimes, it's just not worth exchanging it. But that's when l think that l could have treated myself to a foot massage. But l try to account for all those last minute expenses, like taxis, coffee at the airport due to delays, and the worst is departure tax. It's almost impossible to calculate, whilst standing at an atm, how much you will need before you leave. I always take out a bit extra, but more often than not, it's not enough. And I've been delayed in an non air-conditioned area without water & refusing to withdraw any more currency in that country. An already over-priced bottle of water in an airport works out very expensive with atm fees. This happened to me recently in Manila, terminal 4 has no shops to even buy water with a credit card. I was out of pesos, needed water & gasping to board my Air Asia flight. I knew l had Malaysian Ringett which is accepted onboard. As soon as l dragged myself up those stairs, l quickly fibbed to them that l needed water to take medication and l was served immediately. They don't like people passing out on their flights.

So now in Phnom Penh, l will recover & recuperate. Ready to face the chaos & congestion of Phnom Penh. Looking forward to shopping at Central Market and visiting my favourite bar, the Foreign Correspondents Club, overlooking the mighty Mekong. Gaining my strength back at the very friendly Mad Monkey hostel. Cost per night, dorm room, abt $8. 

MY O MY! I LOVE CHAING MAI

 

Chaing Mai is more Thai than anywhere else in Thailand. It is cultured and a centre for learning, making Chaing Mai a bit classier than her sometimes tacky sister, Bangkok. Chaing Mai is not 'in your face. It is impressive without effort. It easily encapsulates ancient & modern Thailand without any clear divide. The sedateness of the ornate temples & monasteries somehow form with the bustle & liveliness of the  present, creating an extremely pleasant city.

The Chaing Mai Night Bazaar  would have to be the best night market in SE Asia. Chaing Mai sits on an ancient trade route from India to Burma. For centuries it has been the place to buy exotic trinkets, handcrafts & just about anything now. Hill tribes sell their unique handmade products. Major brand names & faux brands are all there. Stunningly beautiful Thai dancers provide cultural entertainment for diners. It's the city's major night time attraction for families, backpackers & locals as well.

 And there is not enough stomach space for all the food that l wanted to sample & consume. Everywhere, hot woks are feverishly knocking up aromatic snacks & feasts. Chaing Mai possesses  restaurants of all cuisines , all of extremely high standard, with all the flair and presentation that the Thais do so well. Also great coffee cafés & charming niche style organic restaurants. Chaing Mai is not the place to consider starting a restrictive diet of any kind.

Though there are some fabulous retreats & day spas not far out of town. And quite a bit of healthy competition has created some very reasonable prices. The Thais know how to pamper. They make you feel like royalty & indulgence is your birth right. My budget takes me for a 250 bht ($8) facial at the local massage parlour. Even there l am treated like a very special guest and l soak up the all the attention & 7 different treatments. My face has been scrubbed, steamed, vacuumed, massaged and l float out feeling like a superstar.

And the best part of town for me is in & around the old city. The cheaper accomodation & the liveliest bars are all in this area. The major gates & part of the ancient wall that surrounded the old city, still exists. This main square is framed by the moat, making Chaing Mai distinctive & distinguished.

Trekking in the area is excellent, combined with the cultural experience of meeting & home-staying with the hill tribes. There are many tribes such as the Karen (longnecks),  Hmong, Akha, Lahu, and all are uniquely different. Some of the hill tribes are shy & quiet, where others can be all over you selling their traditional wares. They speak their own language & celebrate their own animistic festivals. They add a richness to the colour of Northern Thailand.

Chaing Mai abounds with activities, particularly focused on elephants. The elephant camps offer rides, mahout courses from 3-10 days and also there are some camps that are conservation & rescue camps that discourage the riding of elephants. I'm in two minds about the morality of it. I love riding them. They are so powerful & so gentle.

A 3 day trek costs about 1500 bht ($50). Accomodation in backpackers hostels costs about 250-300 bht ($10). I stayed at So Hostel & happy to reccommend it.

LUANG PRABANG #LOVELY #LAID-BACK #LAOS

Whenever Im home in the real world & my mind wanders to travel. I am immediately back in Luang Prabang, Laos, enjoying  the fleeting tropical sunset over the mighty Mekong River. Cold Beer Laos sweating on the timber table, I inhale with blissful satisfaction, an Indonesian cigarette. All is well with the world.

 

All my travels are epitomised or condensed in that scene or moment. When l think of travel, all roads lead to Luang Prabang.
It is 9 years since l first visited Luang Prabang, arriving down on a 2 day slow boat journey from the Thai border. I immediately fell for its charms & I have been returning every year since. No other place has impressed upon me such a lasting sentiment.

Luang Prabang is nestled between 2 rivers, the Mekong & the Nam Khan. The rivers imbue a leisurely river town ambiance. The long past French colonization is retained in its rustic elegance. The shady streets are perfect for strolling & bike riding past ornate Buddhist temples. The riverside cafés are perfect for long, deep & meaningless conversations over industrial strength Laos coffee.

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Within all its character lives its cultural essence, the spiritual capital of Laos. Dozens of monasteries house over a thousand monks & novices studying the holly scriptures. The sound of drums & chanting adds to the atmosphere. It inspires your heart beat at a different pace.

 The Laos culture is still undiluted by mass tourism. The promise of major highways up to China & the threat of mass loads of Chinese tourists has fortunately never eventuated. Thank Buddha. Luang Prabang remains a kick-back, very kool & placid place.

Laos is a breath of fresh air, literally. It's clean & green. With a population of only about 6 or 7 million people who have had very little impact on their environment. Mostly subsistence farmers, the people of Laos practise all the principles of environmentalists without ever having needed to be taught them. There are no flashy roadside billboards along the miles of rolling green hills & peaks. There's no fast food franchises reminding you how far it is to the next burger & fries. There's a feeling of natural space and ease that is rarely felt in SE Asia.

My journey continued from Luang Prabang leaving me wondering how long & how many miles it will be until l am again sitting by the Mekong at sunset. A motor bike is strapped to the roof of the bus, live produce is packed inside the bus & lm perched on a large bag of rice. My mind is full of the energy of Luang Prabang, nothing can ruffle me. There's a long road ahead & lm surrounded by smiling locals. And the road is never long when in good company.

OK I HAVE BEEN GONE & DONE IT!

OK I have gone & done it. I ate dog. Yep, dog, as in a family dog. My Laos friends live high up in northern Laos. Their family had a dog, a black dog, which is traditionally considered better eating or  better for your health. It kept running away and they knew that someone else would eventually kill it for dinner so they decided to do it themselves. They also knew that l was arriving after a 7 or 8 hour journey in a  bus filled with all manner of produce & people along some very tired & winding roads. And they appreciated that I had  gone way out of my way to visit them. So as a festive treat, they cooked up in Laos style, black dog, lizard, bamboo rattan & spiced wood.  How could l refuse?

 And also as they had remembered that a couple of years ago, I had asked many questions about the consumption of dog and that I would be interested in trying it. I had never been given the opportunity before. Dog meat is not as easily come by in Asia as most Westerners think.
Anyway, Im glad that I was not there to see the whole cooking process, Im told that dog meat does not give off the best aroma when cooking.
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The family was over-joyed to offer me something that I had never been offered before. They are very poor and are very grateful for the small gifts that l bring them. One time, Lae my good Laos friend, asked me to buy his father-in-law a miner's torch so he could go & catch frogs in the local pond. He has only one kidney and his health limits his contribution to the family income. It is my favourite & most practical gift that I think I have ever had the good fortune of giving. .And Ive been pleased to accept his meals of fried frogs in garlic & lemon grass many times, presented with a beaming generous smile.

So as hesitant & wary as I was to taste dog meat for the first time, thinking will I be crossing an unthinkable line in doing so. I sat on the floor in good company with generous hearts and enjoyed their welcoming feast served with lots of my favourite sticky rice, and lao lao, a fermented rice whiskey of lethal alcohol percentage. It didn't taste like chicken. It was more beefy & bony
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 Being mostly vegetarian, well probably 80%, I try not to eat mammals, sticking mostly to fish & chicken. But when lm home in Australia, if Mum cooks up a lamb roast, I never turn it down.
So this is sort of how l felt. Not a perfect analogy but morally, how can l discern between the life of a baby lamb and a black dog?

The people in most rural parts of Laos are subsistence farmers. Their religion is animistic Buddhism, a combination of the philosophy of the Buddha with an acknowledgement to the spirit world with all its good & bad ghosts. They have survived for hundreds & possibly thousands of years by eating whatever is available to them. Whether its lizards, insects, monkeys, squirrels ect. There is very little natural wild life in Laos, not even many wild birds. They have eaten them all. Whatever wildlife has survived is now hiding in remote & difficult terrains. And after suffering from the Vietnam War which they had no involvement in except to be the target bombings of the Americans as they were chasing Viet Cong. Laos is the most bombed country on earth. Between 1964 & 1973, the US dropped 2 million tons of bombs on a peaceful country. In Laos it is called the Secret War and hundreds of thousands of Laos civilians were bombed & displaced. There is no exact number of casualties known. But every year, 100 more people are killed or maimed by unexploded bombs, half of them children.

After 2 days with my good friends, I force myself back on yet another crowded bus, heading towards the Thai border. This time there was a motorbike on the roof as well. The journey is 8 or 9 hrs of tight winding roads without a stretch.  All that can be seen is endless green peaks and valleys hanging with heavy mists. There is a wild remoteness in northern Laos. It never becomes monotonous and it lulls you into a deep thoughtful mood like a meditation. It is difficult to imagine any other world and leaves you with a feeling of not wanting to go back to any other world. That's always how l feel about Laos when lm there, it is by far one of my favourite countries in the world.

 

 

 

TUBELESS IN VANG VIENG

TUBELESS IN VANG VIENG

Well not exactly, because tubing still exists in Vang Vieng, just not on the scale of drunken & drugged-out debauchery as it did before.

Gone is the infamous 'Smile Bar,'  a bar sitting on the island in the river, burnt to the ground by the authorities. As well as the 9 or so other bars perched along the Nam Song river that sold multi-mega litres of Beer Laos as well as 'happy' shakes & cocktails laced with dope.

I was there in Sept 2012 when it was closed down. It was my birthday & l was so disappointed that my party day was ruined. Not only were the authorities clamping down on raging & raving  parties on the river, they were restricting it in town as well.

Vang Vieng is a picturesque town, strikingly dominated by the view of the magnificent mountain kaasts. It is situated about 4 hrs north of the Laos capital, Vientiane. It has grown over the last decade or more by the influx of backpackers who have made Vang Vieng one of the 'must do' stopovers in SE Asia. Hundreds & sometimes up to two thousand people were pub-crawling or pub-tubing their way down the river.

 I have to admit it was alot of fun. Each bar was unique in its own way, either offering mud volley ball, swinging trapeze out over the river, flying foxes, slides or high dive boards. Loud music & laughter boomed from every bar. Every night the streets were littered with passed out bodies and staggering & spewing drunks. The Laos people saw Westerners on their worst behaviour, night after night.
But unfortunately deaths were becoming more common as more & more people were visiting Vang Vieng. Mostly from drownings, head & spine injuries and over-doses. Not to mention all the minor injuries of concussions & cut feet. There were two deaths every month. And the Australian Government stepped in & pushed the Laos Government to shut it down.

The town has survived as people are still visiting Vang Vieng & enjoying the simple pleasure of tubing slowly down the Nam Song past the stunning view of the beautiful kaasts. Costs about $7. And there is also so many other adventurous actviities to do in the area. The caving is exceptional & it's so cool floating down through a dark river cave. Rock climbing up the lime-stone kaasts offers world class challenges as well as basic climbing, costs $25 for half day. Trekking is great & visiting the local hill tribe villages of the Hmong & Kamu. Some people prefer to kayak down the Nam Song. During the dry season it is possible & well recommended to hot-air balloon over the kaasts, costs about $75, at dawn & sunset. I went hot-air ballooning there for the first time and though l was scared spitless, it was an awesome experience, like nothing else.

A few days ago when l was there, l noticed that the bars along the river are beginning to open up again which was inevitable. There are 4 at the moment but they are not always all open every day, sometimes only 2. The first being the Nam Song View Restaurant which is walking distance from the starting point. Hopefully it will be policed better this time. I fear it will keep growing until there is a death again.


Meanwhile 'Friends' is still the feature in Vang Vieng, that has been running for at least 10 years that l can remember. It all started with someone opening a bar at the main corner T-intersection and calling it the Friends Bar & showing episodes of 'Friends.' It became so popular with backpackers that all the other bars & restaurants needed to follow suit. And now it is almost an institution in Vang Vieng. And it is such a catch, l have wasted so much time there, sitting mindlessly after dinner watching episode after episode. And lm amazed that every time l go back, l always see an episode that l havent seen before. How is that possible? Maybe they are still secretly making them just for the Vang Vieng market.

Guesthouses are very competitive & generally range from 60,000 kip to 100,000 kip ($7.50 to $13) per night per room, depending if you want air-conditioning or a fan. There are a couple of cheaper dorm rooms & some more up-market hotels with a pool.

Laos is lovely. The people are openly friendly & curious of where you are from. Hospitable & funny, their population is much smaller than neighbouring Asian countries and so less competitive for your dollar. They are 'less in your face.'

Vang Vieng is now becoming more of an adventures' town for tourists that may want to try something out of the usual. Or something requiring some skill or strength. Or just hire a bike & tootle around the kaasts, stopping off to buy exotic fruit from the locals, enjoying a relaxed chat with them and then heading for the Blue Lagoon for a swim. Whatever you prefer to do in Vang Vieng, it has to be better than just getting wasted.